I hope I don’t jinx myself by writing this post (knock on wood)… but it seems like my grad student-ness is on an upswing of sorts. A good part of it could be because I’ve been getting up early the past couple of weeks. I have a rotation student working under me this summer, and he gets to lab at a respectable time which means I have to as well. On top of that, K has been meeting me at the gym in the mornings. Sigh. I hate the gym. But its good for me, so the waking up early + exercising + getting to lab on time is making for an interesting combination where I feel better about what I’m able to accomplish in a day.

The irony in this post is that a week from today I’ll be meeting with the Boss for a regular update, and I’m pretty sure I have nothing new to to tell him. But I think sometimes that’s not unusual for life in the lab, sadly.

I just ordered this white board on Amazon to make a longer-term to-do list to keep out & visible in lab too, so that when I dawdle and think I have nothing to do on a given day, it will be there staring me in the face.

I have a fixation with lists and crossing things off that has been augmented during grad school. Lately I’ve been confining it to the tasks list in my Google calendar, but I’m hoping this little white board will help me hammer at some of the more latent lists that aren’t pressing me day-to-day. We’ll see! I’ll try anything at this point, and hope to ride this upswing wave as long as I can before the next inevitable crash.